The Contras, Crack and Senator Inouye

By THOMAS MOUNTAIN | CounterPunch | December 18, 2012

The USA’s longest serving and reputably most powerful Senator, Daniel “The One Armed Bandit” Inouye has died in a hospital outside of Washington D.C. at the age of 88, bringing an end to the career of one of the most loyal, and criminal, careers in service to Pax Americana.

Dan “the One Armed Bandit” Inouye was christened such by his comrades in arms in the US Army’s legendary 442nd outfit made up almost exclusively of Japanese Americans during W.W.II for stealing a wedding ring off a dead woman civilian and subsequently having the arm allegedly bearing the stolen ring blown off by a German artillery shell.

This marked the beginning of a long, sordid career in service to the USA that reached its peak when he almost single handedly covered up the role of the CIA in starting what went on to become the global pandemic known as the Crack Cocaine holocaust (see Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance” or  “White Out” by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair).

Back in the beginnings of the 1980’s the CIA under President Reagan was carrying out a particularly murderous “contra-revolution” against the then revolutionary Sandanista lead government of Nicaragua in an attempt to destroy the first successful armed overthrow of a client regime of the USA in Central America.

The murder and mayhem carried out by the CIA proxies known as the Nicaraguan “Contras” proved to be very unpopular amongst the American people, then still able to remember the disastrous USA intervention in Vietnam and the US Congress passed a law supposedly cutting off funding for the Contras.

The CIA quickly moved to repair its cash flow problem by arranging for Nicaraguan Contra supporters in the USA to begin importing large amounts of cheap cocaine supplied by the narcotrafficking Colombian regime. Eventually these CIA backed drug dealers linked up with an enterprising black American nicknamed “Freeway Rick” who took powdered cocaine and cooked it up into “rocks” what became known as “crack” and the subsequent epidemic that metastasized into a global pandemic was born.

That’s right, before the CIA got involved cocaine was a rich mans drug, expensive, only mildly addictive and mainly taken orally by snorting up ones nose.

Thanks to “The Man”, in this case a light bird colonel named Oliver North working out of the White House with the CIA, cocaine quickly became a drug cheap enough for the masses, and when it is smoked rather than sniffed half of all those who smoke it only twice become addicted.

This sordid tale became part of what was dubbed “The Iran Contra Scandal” and resulted in hearings held by the US Congress that were supposed to get to the bottom of all this rottenness. Chaired by Sen. Inouye, of Watergate fame, the hearings instead became a massive coverup, with Sen. Inouye repeatedly having to intervene and shut down any public discussion of the CIA’s role in cocaine trafficking.

For this service to Pax Americana Dan Inouye was eventually awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, supposedly for his heroism some 50 years previously when he gained his “One Armed Bandit” sobriquet.

“The One Armed Bandit” was one of the most prominent proponents of what is known as the Military-Industrial Complex and brought home the bacon for his home state of Hawaii for over half a century, keeping defense industry dollars and its related employment pouring into Hawaii via the Pearl Harbor Naval Base and other massive US military installations across the state, and was the real “Godfather” of politics in Hawaii. When he died he was said to be  3rd in line for the Presidency, though he was known as “the Senator who never asked for a favor.’

Dan Inouye was a true “American Liberal”, and truly dangerous as such. Rather than remembering him for his supposedly liberal bent, the world must see him for what he really was, a particularly evil proponent of American Imperialism, willing and able to even cover up a drug epidemic that went on to become a global pandemic, Crack Cocaine, back at a time when a real investigation and subsequent prosecution may have been able to prevent millions of deaths and tens of millions destroyed lives.

Thomas C. Mountain can be reached at thomascmountain_at_yahoo_dot_com.

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